The road they share: the social conflict element in Marx, Keynes and Kalecki

Pablo Gabriel Bortz

Keywords: Keynes; Kalecki; Marx; social conflict; fiscal policy; interest rate

Published in print:Oct 2017

Category:Research Article

DOI:https://doi.org/10.4337/roke.2017.04.06

Pages:563–575

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https://www.elgaronline.com/view/journals/roke/5-4/roke.2017.04.06.xml

This paper sets out to find commonalities and divergences in the writings of Marx, Kalecki and Keynes regarding their analysis of social (class) conflict in capitalist societies. We find evidence that shows that, contrary to a harmonious view of society, Keynes had a class stratification of society and an understanding of conflictive interests and developments compatible with that of Marx and Kalecki. The presence of political motivations as fuel for economic instability is another shared element between Kalecki and Keynes. Differences arise regarding the relative importance of the inter- and intra-class dynamic as a driver of distributive conflict, and the State's capabilities to guide or control those conflicts and their consequences.

1 INTRODUCTION

‘The class war will find me on the side of the educated bourgeoisie’, Keynes famously stated in his pamphlet ‘Am I a liberal?’ (CW IX, p. 297). 1 His political affiliations have been the object of several analyses (Skidelsky 2003; Dostaler 2007, among others). It is widely known that he rejected Marxism, and particularly Marx's theory, even though on many occasions he made use of some of Marx's concepts, such as the monetary circulation scheme. It is understood that Keynes sought to protect capitalism by changing it from within. This paper seeks to explore a different aspect of Keynes's theory, not focusing on his political actions and tastes, but on the political corollaries of his theory. We aim to understand the role of conflict and social struggle; whether it implies a harmonious view of (capitalist) society such as in the marginalist theory (as presented by Jevons or John Bates Clark, for instance); or whether it reflects a struggle, divergence and incompatibilities in the interest of the different classes of society that expresses itself in an economic behaviour full of macroeconomic consequences. We are also interested in Keynes's acknowledgement of the political obstacles faced by the policy choices implied by these theoretical corollaries, both in domestic and international affairs.

It seems natural to compare this role with the theories of the other two major economists who adopted a class stratification structure when developing their analyses of capitalism, namely Karl Marx and Michał Kalecki. Marx is known to define class struggle, or social conflict, as the engine of history. In a capitalist society, the search for higher profits through cost-cutting innovation and labour-saving investment eventually produces the opposite effect by leading to falling profit rates and accumulation crises. Giving in to this analysis, Bismarck developed what we call today a welfare state, in order to support a minimal standard of living for the working poor and the disabled, effectively sustaining a certain demand level. It would not be stretching the imagination too far to say that such appeasing policies, which seem to have got the approval of Kalecki and Keynes, would reflect a social cooperation view identifiable with the writings of these authors. 2 However, it is the contention of this paper that Kalecki's and Keynes's view and theories on the topic have more in common with Marx than a casual reading might suggest. That is not surprising for the case of Kalecki, who was himself inspired by authors such as Rosa Luxemburg and Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky, but also in the case of Keynes, a careful reading will show that a class structure also permeates his view and analysis, with conflicting interest among and within them.

The paper is structured as follows, with the clarification that we will restrict our focus to writings referring to capitalism. Section 2 reviews the role of intra- and inter-class conflict in Marx's analysis, using it as the background or benchmark for comparison throughout the paper. Section 3 reviews Kalecki's writings on the topic under discussion, while Section 4 surveys Keynes's writings, quoting extensively in order to reflect a consistent view of the political factors, inextricably linked with class interests, involved in the description, diagnosis and policy prescriptions for the maladies of capitalist economies. Section 5 concludes.